The Image That Keeps Me Improving
It comes from an ancient Japanese art.
We all face challenges on our route to our goals.
About a year ago, I noticed I was doing something strange. I would experience a setback, something in my plan wouldn’t go the way I’d expected or even hoped, and then I would stop dead in my tracks.
It seems so silly as I write this because it’s so easy to tell that those setbacks were just setbacks in retrospect. Anyone reading this can tell that those problems weren’t show stoppers, but when we experience them in the moment, it’s a lot harder to properly identify them.
Is it an obstacle or part of my story?
I have this vision of a productive, virtuous, honorable, relentlessly hard-working, completely self-actualized person in my mind. Some of the time, I meet the standard. The rest of the time, I don’t.
What’s strange is that I can sometimes see that self-actualized version of me as the starting point—as though my real life doesn’t start until I reach that starting line. Of course, this is ridiculous. We’re all living our lives out right now. This is me right now.
This means that the obstacle we face is part of our story. The trouble we get ourselves into is when the obstacle doesn’t fit into the visions we had for our stories. When they don't seem compatible, we tend to reject them as truth. We tend to ignore them or hide them.
Then, a mentor said something earth-shaking to me.
“The fake you is fine. It’s the real you I’m worried about.”
Of course, what she meant was that the virtuous, self-actualized vision of my perfect, consistent self had no flaws and didn’t exist. How could you worry about that?
But the actual flesh and brain that I am, of course, well, isn’t perfect. In fact, not only is it important to realize this imperfection—I think most of us can do that to some degree—but it’s also critical to accept that reality. Only after accepting those obstacles as part of us can we confront our false selves.
Confronting the false self.
By comparing our real selves to our false, self-actualized versions, we can see the gaps we desire to close. By examining them closely, we can even see the gaps that we don’t need to close. Doing this exercise of comparison forces us to accept where we are in our journey to self-actualization and that could feel good, bad, or some wild and nuanced mixture of the two.
The point is that by confronting our false self, the self we desire to be or even sometimes think we are, we afford our actual selves the opportunity to audit our deficits and create a plan to address them (or not).
I’d also like to share with you an image and a philosophy that is helping me remember the important lesson of accepting obstacles as parts of the journey.
Kintsugi is a Japanese word that means “golden joinery.” It’s a longstanding art of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or even platinum. The idea is that the event of breakage and the process of repair are seen clearly as part of the object’s story instead of something to be hidden. It’s something that makes the object even more beautiful.
“Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated . . . a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin . . . Mushin is often literally translated as "no mind," but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions.
The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.”
— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics
If you’re familiar with Japanese culture or philosophy, you might recognize a similar concept of wabi-sabi, which gives us permission to embrace the imperfect.
It’s not a today thing.
I had a hard time coming to this realization and it has taken years. Maybe it took so long because I didn’t want to accept some of the things I am. But the facts are the facts. Past decisions and experiences are unchangeable. I am who I’ve led myself to be, today. The obstacles in the rearview mirror are part of my story, whether I like it or not.
What’s left is confronting that person, the “today” me, and making a deal with him to help.
We have to be partners if we’re going to reach self-actualization.
This post was a little more philosophical and less “rah-rah” motivation guy than usual.
I hope it was useful.
Thanks for sharing this, I feel inspired!